The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-12-05
WOMEN'S DOINGS.
How Some of Them Make Living
and Others Win Fame.

WOMEN'S DOINGS.
How Some of Them Make a Living
and Others Win Fame.
New York, Dec. 3.-The famous drop
curtain of the Madison Square Theatre was
the first work executed by a group Of wom-
en- in New York, whose subsequent efforts
have placed on a firm foundation what de-
serves to be called the only distinctively
American School of Art in the country.
Some day the great American novel may
materialze; some day we may have an
American School of Painting or of Music.
Some day we may not look to Europe for
art culture in any line. Meantime the AS
ISOLATED Artist of New York established a
school of embroidery, whose work IS as
characteristic of its time and founded on as
enduring art principles as were the old
Gobelins tapestries. The exhibition of
American tapestries in progress for the past
fortnight at the rooms of the society has de-
monstrated again the fact that as beautiful
drapery, upholstery and wall hanging fab
RIGS are being produced in this country as
are made in the world to-day.
Mrs. Candace Wheeler is the head of the
Society of Associated Artists. She is a sis
ter of Mrs. Jeanette Thurber, of American
opera fame, and the mother of Dora
Wheeler, an artist of exceptional powers.
Mrs. Wheeler is an exquisitely pretty wom-
an, who looks quite as much like her daugh-
ter's elder sister as her mother, and has a
thoroughly feminine charm. She is wom-
an of business sense, also, and the affairs of
the society have been managed with skill
and discretion. She has pushed embroid-
ery further and in a more independent di-
rection than any other art in the country
has been a very apostle to teach self-help to
Young women and has made considerable
money withal, by her inventions of new
methods in tapestry and of artistic fabrics
and dyes.
WHEN MRS. WHEELER BEGAN WORK,
decorative needle work was the last thing to
which one in his senses would think of
ascribing a money value. What she and
her coadiutors have accomplished is a trans
latiou of the painters methods into needle
work Her first object was the training of
strong and original designers, so that girls
who had been frittering away their days in
"fancy work"-with no fancy in it-might
treat textiles with a feeling belonging to
pictures. All this called for new fabrics,
new materials, new color effects, new meth
DDS of expressing drawing and perspective.
All this has resulted in a tapestry canvas
woven of silk and SO treated that the de-
sign wrought by the needle becomes part of
the texture, and a landscape with color,
foreground, middle distance and perspective
stands out upon it, reproducing even the
painters technique, whether it be the brush
work of an oil painting or the broad washes
of the water color The bold creation of
is accomplishing is all important addition to
the serious art work OF the country, and is
showing numbers of young women theroad
to honorable self-Support The new tapes
tries are not playthings for day. Some of
them are purely decorative fancies true in
spirit and in execution, but subject to the
capriueS of fashion, but others are master
pieces for al time. Take an instance from
the tapestry Studies from American fiction,
HawthorrA's Alice Pyncheon on her way to
Matthew &auIe's wedding, shown at the ex-
hibition. Ahce's thin white gown clings
close about her and binding snowstorm
fills the air. The subject would not he an
easy one even for a painter to treat, with
its narrow range of tints: but in tapestry it
is poetic; it suggests Hawthorne's weird
charm: it does for America and American
literature what the embroideries of the mid
die ages did for the history and the romance
and the art of that bygone time.
Dora Wheeler has, perhaps, the finest
artistic instinct of American tapestry de-
signers, but Mrs NJ A. Williamson, of In
dianapolis is as bold and thoroughly orig
inai an American, as any.
THERE is NO MORE INTERESTING MOVE
NENT
now going on in New York than that which
looks to the organization of tenement house
working women. 1t is interesting because
it is made from the inside, not the outside
New York is plagued with big contingent
of professional philanthropists. There are
scores upon scores of women-newly rich
many of them-with little or nothing to do.
living on the edges of society and eager to
cross the boundary line. The readiest way
that occurs to them is to get their names
written down on 'boards" of one kind and
another and take up benevolence as diver
sion which keeps them in good company and
gets their names into the newspapers. These
women faint everything they touch with
patronage. They spend their money lavishly
and most of them are thoroughly good-na-
tured at heart; and in spite of their selfish
motives and dilletante methods, really mean
to do good, and think they are doing
good The great mas of the working
women fight shy of these amateur Lady
Bountifuls. They don't want to be invited
into a Sunday school class with a cooking
school annex. They don't want to have
their morals supervised, their way of living
criticised and their independence Of
thought controlled They don't care a fig
about sweetness and light; they want some .
butter on the bread they have honestly
earned and piece Of meat to go with il, all
to be eaten without japanese paper nap
kins or deluging anybody with thank yous.
The present effort at organization for bet
ter wages is not controlled by any board.
There are well known women who are CIV
ing their services, but they are not profess
sional philanthropists, and the general di-
rection is in the hands of the working
women themselves. Miss Ida M. Van Et-
ten, who has lectured at Vassar and John
Hopkins University on the battle of the
is a bright-faced young
woman, almost girlish in aspect, who hos
enlisted for the war. Bishop Huntington's
daughter. ARIA Huntington, has worked
among the east side poor for years. Ga
brielle Greeley is Horace Greeley's daugh-
~. nd annthnr who is in the fn,ht To 10 "